Minnie's fair trade

She is one of the most prolific young actresses in Hollywood. But Minnie Driver has revealed she is putting her career on hold to work in a sweatshop in Cambodia. Driver will leave behind her boyfriend, tennis star Robby Ginepri, and her flat in Notting Hill to experience an impoverished life in South-East Asia.

Last night she spoke for the first time about her plans to highlight how Western clothing companies use "slave labour" in Third World countries by working for "weeks, perhaps months" alongside teenagers in Phnom Penh.

Driver, 32 - currently filming the movie version of Phantom Of The Opera - told the Standard she will use her fame to raise awareness of unfair global trade agreements which damage poorer countries by making it hard for them to sell their products fairly in Western markets.

Other celebrities, notably the band Coldplay and actress Angelina Jolie, have already backed the fair trade cause, but Driver's gesture shows a dramatic commitment.

At last night's London premiere of Seabiscuit, she said: "I hope to make a documentary or at least write a book - with the help of a photographer friend of mine from the Washington Post - about working in a sweatshop in Cambodia.

"I will be working alongside other young women for as long as it takes for me to raise awareness of the fair trade issue. We in Britain and the Western world fuel the problem every time we buy clothes from any one of the major manufacturers which make goods in the Third World using cheap labour.

"I hope doing this will help raise standards, pay and conditions of employment in developing countries. Western companies should be paying a lot more to the workers in these sweatshops for the jobs they do. The inequality is shocking."

Also at the premiere and afterparty at the Park Lane Hotel was Princess Anne's daughter Zara Phillips, 22, a keen horsewoman, who was attending her first London premiere with her brother Peter, 24, and their stepfather Commodore Tim Laurence.